If most Jordanians are
Palestinians, why do they deserve to parts of
Israel? Why
doesn't the world insist the Palestinians go
home to Jordan?

Jordan is Palestine - Palestinian Homeland

On August 23,1959, the Prime
Minister of Jordan stated, "We are the
Government of Palestine, the army of Palestine
and the refugees of Palestine."

What
Sharon Didn't Tell The United Nations
by David SingerSep 22, '05 / 18 Elul 5765

Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
missed a golden opportunity to address the future of the
West Bank before the 170 world leaders who had gathered at
the United Nations last week to celebrate the 60th
Anniversary of the founding of that organization.

Instead, the words he uttered were sweet music to the ears
of most of those leaders, justifying the vitriolic War of
Words waged by their countries against the Jewish State, in
complete betrayal of the promises given to the Jewish people
by the United Nations and its predecessor the League of
Nations.

Standing at the podium, Mr. Sharon meekly repeated the
mantra continually preached by these countries: "The
Palestinians are also entitled to freedom, and to a
national, sovereign existence in a state of their own."

This was a far cry from the defiant words uttered by Mr.
Sharon in Time on 17 April 1989: "Jordan is
Palestine! The capital of Palestine is Amman. If Palestinian
Arabs want to find their political expression, they will
have to do it in Amman."

No attempt was made in Mr. Sharon's speech to retrace the
history of Palestine, a territory created with defined
boundaries for the first time ever by the Treaty of Sevres
in 1920 and the League of Nations in 1922, after the defeat
of Turkey and Germany in World War I. He could well have
quoted Israel's former ambassador to the United Nations, the
late Abba Eban, who had eloquently summarised that history
when he said, in Newsweek on 2 December 1974:

"Palestine comes into modern history as a region extending
on both sides of the Jordan, comprising the present
sovereign territories of Israel and Jordan and the
administered areas of the West Bank and Gaza. Of this
original Palestine, 80 per cent became an exclusively Arab
domain through the separation of Trans-Jordan from
Palestine."

A modicum of research could have enabled Mr. Sharon to also
remind the gathered world leaders, particularly King
Abdullah of Jordan, of the statement made to the United
Nations by Israeli Ambassador Yehuda Blum on 3 December,
1979:

Let me remind the Jordanian
representatives of the record. Between 1922 and 1946,
Trans-Jordan remained an integral part of Mandated
Palestine. In 1946, it became the independent
Palestinian Arab State in that area. When King Abdullah
came to the Jericho Conference in December 1948, which
was attended by Palestinian Arabs west of the Jordan
River, he was crowned 'King of Palestine'. Abdullah, in
fact, wanted to rename his country 'The Kingdom of
Palestine'. King Hussein, in his memoirs, indicates
clearly that Trans-Jordan was arbitrarily siphoned off
from the rest of Mandated Palestine. Crown Prince Hassan
of Jordan, in the Jordanian National Assembly on 2
February 1970, stated unambiguously: "Palestine is
Jordan and Jordan is Palestine. The nation is one and
the land is one."

Given the current leadership tensions
between Mr. Sharon and Binyamin Netanyahu, Mr. Sharon would
probably have found it difficult to quote what Mr. Netanyahu
told the United Nations on 11 December 1984, although the
national interest certainly dictated Mr. Sharon should do
so:

Clearly, in Eastern and Western
Palestine, there are only two peoples, the Arabs and the
Jews. Just as clearly, there are only two states in that
area, Jordan and Israel. The Arab State of Jordan,
containing some three million Arabs, does not allow a
single Jew to live there. It also contains 4/5 of the
territory originally allocated by this body's
predecessor, the League of Nations, for the Jewish
National Home. The other State, Israel, has a population
of over four million, of which one sixth is Arab. It
contains less than 1/5 of the territory originally
allocated to the Jews under the Mandate.... It cannot be
said, therefore, that the Arabs of Palestine are lacking
a state of their own. The demand for a second
Palestinian Arab State in Western Palestine, and a 22nd
Arab State in the world, is merely the latest attempt to
push Israel back into the hopelessly vulnerable
armistice lines of 1949.

Having reminded the world leaders present
of these past statements, Mr. Sharon should then have told
them:

The League of Nations and the United Nations promised the
Jews that they would be entitled to resettle and
reconstitute the Jewish National Home on land from which
they had been dispossessed 2,000 years earlier by Roman
invaders, provided nothing was done which might prejudice
the civil and religious rights of the "existing non-Jewish
communities in Palestine". No political rights were
conferred or intended to be conferred on those communities
then or in the future.

This promise to the Jews extended to the West Bank, which
you now obscenely call "occupied Palestinian territory" and
from where you wish to see all Jews removed to create a
State solely for the Arab residents, contrary to the terms
of the Mandate and article 80 of the United Nations Charter,
which the United Nations has consistently ignored, but which
it must now confront and acknowledge.

The Road Map calling for the creation of a sovereign Arab
State between Jordan and Israel in the whole of the West
Bank and Gaza, now supported by the United Nations, the
United States, Russia and the European Union, is the very
opposite of what the United Nations has pledged to fulfil in
accordance with its own Charter.

Israel now enjoys peace treaties with its neighbours Jordan
and Egypt.

The path to peace in the West Bank and Gaza must involve the
division of sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza between
these three nations in trilateral negotiations chaired by
the Secretary General of the United Nations.

Israel stands ready to enter into such negotiations to cede
sovereignty of the heavily populated Arab areas of the West
Bank to Jordan. Israel's unilateral withdrawal from Gaza
indicates its willingness to cede sovereignty in Gaza to
Egypt or Jordan and not rule over its neighbours.

I urge you all to abandon the idea that Jews have no legal
right to settle in the West Bank and reconstitute their
national home in that area. If international law is to have
any meaning in regulating the conduct of the international
community, then you must give legal effect to the Mandate
and article 80 of the United Nations Charter.

Seize the day, because the time is short.

If the 170 dignitaries present were not prepared to listen,
at least the 15 million Jews all over the world would be
applauding Israel's prime minister for his principled stand,
instead of recoiling at his abject acceptance of Jewish
rights being trampled in their own homeland by a United
Nations acting in breach of its own Charter.